Sefer Yetzirah, the Cube of Space, and the Emergence of ... - Maqom

More documents

Recommendations

Info

in terms of a tropical paradise. In the south we can relax and experience peace and astate of wholeness.Grace – Tav – Center: The center always represents a point of balance, and whenever Ithink of the letter tav, I immediately think of the word Torah. It is Torah, when usedcorrectly, that keeps us in balance and on an even keel. Furthermore, Torah is associatedwith grace since in the Talmud we read, “To him who is engaged in the study of theTorah by night, the Holy One extends a thread of grace by day. (B. Avodah Zarah 3b)”As we see from the above discussion, the qualities attributed to the letters bet, gimmel,dalet, kaf, peh, resh, and tav correspond well to the compass directions of the Cube ofSpace. Also, notice at this point that we have the following associations attributed to thethree mother letters and the seven double letters.Mother Letters: aleph t airmem n watershin a fireDouble Letters: bet c upgimmel d downdalet s eastkaf f westpeh p northresh r southtav , centerAdditionally, observe what it says in verse 1:14 of the Sefer Yetzirah.22
“These are the ten sefirot of restraint: The Breath of the Living God, Breath fromBreath, Water from Breath, Fire from Water, Up, Down, East, West, North,South.” (Sefer Yetzirah 1:14)The breath of the Living God is represented by the letter aleph. Similarly, water, fire, up,down, east, west, north, and south correspond to the letters mem, shin, bet, gimmel, dalet,kaf, peh, and resh. This leaves only the letter tav to account for, and so it mustcorrespond to breath from breath. This makes sense because aleph is the first letter ofthe alphabet and tav is the last, and in verse 1:7 we read “Their end is imbedded in theirbeginning and their beginning in their end.” In particular, if tav represents Torah, thenthis has additional meaning to us since in tradition the Torah is the blueprint for theuniverse 10 . Thus, as with any blueprint, the end is contained in the beginning and viceversa,and this implies that the end is the beginning. Hence, breath from breath.At the very least we may conclude from the above that the three mother letters and theseven double letters are associated with the ten sefirot. However, I wish to carry theargument even further. My belief is that, at this point in the development of Kabbalah,the three mother letters and the seven double letters are the ten sefirot. In otherwords, it is my theory that these ten letters originally did double duty, counted twice asboth letters and as the restraining utterances represented by the sefirot, and that it is onlyin later Kabbalistic works such as the Bahir and the Zohar that the sefirot acquired newinterpretations and an existence entirely independent of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.10 Genesis Rabbah I:123
Page 3: “With thirty-two wondrous paths o
Page 10 and 11: destruction of the original state o
Page 12 and 13: exaggeration to say that letters cr
Page 14 and 15: successful leader, then we will gen
Page 16 and 17: “He selected three letters from t
Page 19 and 20: In our next verse from the Sefer Ye
Page 21: to begin to dissolve. And in so doi
Page 25 and 26: Hebrew Letter Glyph Assignment in S
Page 27 and 28: Sefer Yetzirah, attached to cube in
Page 29 and 30: was the Ark of the Covenant that co
Page 31 and 32: The passage from the Bahir that wil
Page 33 and 34: The Zohar, The Book of Splendor (Ra
Page 35 and 36: We will now examine one more concep
Page 37 and 38: Because the Hebrew word for sapphir
Page 39 and 40: “It is written: And the intellige
Page 41 and 42: If we want to convert a three-dimen
Page 43 and 44: Again, we don’t know precisely ho
Page 45 and 46: hexagon, 6 for the Star of David, a
Page 47 and 48: diagram is to think of all the ways
Page 49 and 50: Recall also how in the Sefer Yetzir
Page 51 and 52: other words, learn to discipline yo
Page 53 and 54: To move up the central column of th
Page 55 and 56: It is now time to examine the twelv
Page 57: Letters Glyph GRA Short Version Lon

Sefer Yetzirah, the Cube of Space, and the Emergence of ... - Maqom

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?